EPA Global Warming Expert (and Its Highest-Paid Employee) Avoided Doing Work for 13 Years by Pretending He Was in the CIA

A former Environmental Protection Agency
employee and top global warming expert will be sentenced Wednesday
after pleading guilty to defrauding taxpayers of nearly $1 million in a
wild scheme dating back to at least 2000.

Former
EPA official John Beale will be sentenced Wednesday for defrauding
taxpayers of nearly $1 million (Image source: House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee)

John C. Beale, 65, in a “crime of
massive proportions” avoided doing his real job for more than a decade
by telling his supervisors he was an undercover CIA agent,NBC News reported, citing federal prosecutors. He pleaded guilty in September.

Federal authorities are now requesting
Beale serve at least 30 months in federal prison, saying his “historic”
lies are “offensive” to CIA agents who actually do covert missions.

EPA Assistant Inspector General Patrick
Sullivan, who headed the investigation into Beale’s fraud, was shocked
with what he found when he started digging in February 2012.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, How could this
possibly have happened in this agency?” he told NBC. “I’ve worked for
the government for 35 years. I’ve never seen a situation like this.”

So how did Beale manage to get away
with the deception for so long? Did no one think to double-check his CIA
claims? It would appear not, according to federal prosecutors.

Beale was “enabled” because top
officials failed to verify his stories or even question the hundreds of
thousands of dollars given to him in bonuses and travel expenses.

Before he “retired” in 2011, Beale was
earning an annual salary of $206,00, plus bonuses — more than the
salaries of his immediate boss and EPA administrator Gina McCarthy,
according to official documents.

The former EPA official often skipped
going in to work, once going 18 months straight without ever setting
foot in his office by telling his supervisors — including McCarthy —
that he was doing covert work for the CIA. During a six-month stretch
when he didn’t go in, he told supervisors he was needed in Pakistan
because the Taliban was torturing his CIA replacement, NBC reported.

“Due to recent events that you have
probably read about, I am in Pakistan,” Beale wrote McCarthy in a Dec.
18, 2010 email. “Got the call Thurs and left Fri. Hope to be back for
Christmas ….Ho, ho, ho.”

Beale, of course, had no connections to the CIA.

For all the time he told his
supervisors he was doing covert work for the CIA, he was really spending
time at his vacation house on Cape Cod or doing chores around his house
in Northern Virginia.

“The CIA has no record of him ever walking through the door,” Sullivan said.

Beale once told supervisors he needed a
handicap parking space at EPA headquarters because he suffered from
malaria contracted during a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Beale, who got the handicap parking space, doesn’t have malaria and he never served in Vietnam.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (Getty Images)

Investigators eventually became
interested in Beale’s supposed relationship with the CIA after he
“retired” in September 2011. That is, investigators became interested in
Beale after they learned he was still drawing a paycheck from the EPA
about a year and a half after he supposedly left. Oddly enough, top EPA
officials who were present at a retirement gala for the fake CIA
operative didn’t find out until much later than Beale was still being
paid nearly two years after leaving.

Beale initially tried to brush
investigators aside by telling them his relationship with the CIA was
“classified.” They persisted, however, and Beale eventually confessed,
though he apparently didn’t show much remorse

“The CIA has no record of him ever walking through the door.”

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Beale’s defense team hopes to reduce
his sentence by emphasizing the “admirable work” he did for the agency
including his part in rewriting the Clean Air Act in 1990 and leading
the EPA delegations to the United Nations conferences on “global
warming” in 2000 and 2001.

McCarthy defended herself by taking credit for “uncovering” the fraud while she was head of the Office of Air and Radiation.

“EPA has worked in coordination with
its inspector general and the U.S. Attorney’s office. The Agency has
[put] in place additional safeguards to help protect against fraud and
abuse related to employee time and attendance, including strengthening
supervisory controls of time and attendance, improved review of employee
travel and a tightened retention incentive processes,” Alisha Johnson,
McCarthy’s press secretary, told NBC in a statement.

In
2008, Beale didn’t show up at the EPA for six months, telling his boss
that he was part of a special multi-agency election-year project
relating to “candidate security.” He billed the government $57,000 for
five trips to California that were made purely “for personal reasons,”
his lawyer acknowledged. (His parents lived there.)

Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the
government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he travelled first class
and stayed at high end hotels, charging more than twice the government’s
allowed per diem limit. But his expense vouchers were routinely
approved by another EPA official, a colleague of Beale’s, whose conduct
is now being reviewed by the inspector general, according to
congressional investigators briefed on the report.

Beale was caught when he “retired” very publicly but kept drawing his
large salary for another year and a half. Top EPA officials, including
McCarthy, attended a September 2011 retirement party for Beale and two
colleagues aboard a Potomac yacht. Six months later, McCarthy learned he
was still on the payroll.

In
2008, Beale didn’t show up at the EPA for six months, telling his boss
that he was part of a special multi-agency election-year project
relating to “candidate security.” He billed the government $57,000 for
five trips to California that were made purely “for personal reasons,”
his lawyer acknowledged. (His parents lived there.)

Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the
government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he travelled first class
and stayed at high end hotels, charging more than twice the government’s
allowed per diem limit. But his expense vouchers were routinely
approved by another EPA official, a colleague of Beale’s, whose conduct
is now being reviewed by the inspector general, according to
congressional investigators briefed on the report.

Beale was caught when he “retired” very publicly but kept drawing his
large salary for another year and a half. Top EPA officials, including
McCarthy, attended a September 2011 retirement party for Beale and two
colleagues aboard a Potomac yacht. Six months later, McCarthy learned he
was still on the payroll.

smh he should have just rolled out low key but no he had to be greedy.

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